WO2001099021A1

WO2001099021A1 - System and method for application of network access policy to ecommerce transactions

Info

Publication number: WO2001099021A1
Application number: PCT/US2001/020147
Authority: WO
Inventors: Albert Reiche
Original assignee: Gopin Inc
Priority date: 2000-06-22
Filing date: 2001-06-22
Publication date: 2001-12-27
Also published as: WO2001099021A9; AU2001278853A1

Abstract

A secure and anonymous transaction network where a client (102) and vendor (104a) conduct electronic transactions using a telephony based payment engine (108).

Description

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR APPLICATION OF NETWORK ACCESS POLICY TO

ECOMMERCE TRANSACTIONS

_ Field of the Invention

The invention relates to the field of electronic

commerce, and more particularly to secure network transactions

using telephony-based access management.

Background of the Invention

The increasing demand for Internet transactions has

prompted an increasing need for advanced electronic payment

arrangements. While the prospects of frictionless commerce

and reduced cost on the supply side have made many consumers

interested in purchasing more goods and services over the

Internet, many people are concerned about the security and

integrity of payment mechanisms on the Web. Third party

credit-.card accounts, for instance, are widely available and

often used but are not considered totally secure, since the

consumer must allow credit card account number or other

sensitive information to be transmitted over a number of hops

and ultimately be deposited on a merchant's or other Web

server. A variety of credit-based and cash-based payment

architectures have been attempted or proposed, but none offer

the universality, reliability and security of, for example,

the billing infrastructure of the public telecommunications

network for telephone usage. More robust yet secure network

transaction technology is desirable.

Summary of the Invention

The invention overcoming these and other problems in the

art relates to a system and method for the application of

network access policy to ecommerce transactions, in which

existing telecommunications resources may be deployed to

support generalized network transactions. More particularly,

according to the invention telephone network switching and

administrative infrastructure such as the Nortel Networks

Digital Multiplexing System (DMS™) and associated ■ access

policy management protocols along with other services supplied

by that platform may be taken advantage of for the distinct

purposes f electronic commerce fulfillment.

The transaction engine of the invention may do so, for

instance, by issuing personal ticket, digital certificate or

other authentication receipts after validation against calling card, credit card, or other payment or authentication

databases via line information database or other resources. Brief Description of the Drawings

The invention will be described with respect to the

accompanying drawings, in which like elements are referenced

with like numerals.

Figure 1 illustrates an overall architecture for

transaction processing according to the invention.

Figure 2 illustrates a transaction event processed

according to the invention.

Figure 3 illustrates^' a flowchart of network transaction

processing according to the invention.

Figure^' 4 illustrates an overall architecture for

transaction processing according to the invention in another

regard .

Detailed Description of Preferred Embodiments

As illustrated in Figure 1, in the existing public

telecommunications network, advanced platforms such as the

Nortel Networks DMS™ series of switches represent a widely

available, highly robust infrastructure whose conventional use

is to record electronic events of a specific type, namely

telephone calls and other telecommunication services. The DMS

platform may typically be deployed to manage and allocate network access to persons holding valid calling card,

residential, business or other telecommunications accounts.

The system and method of the invention in one regard relate to

the adaptation of the transaction capabilities of this and

other existing telecommunication plant for the separate

purpose of electronic commerce, such as Internet and other

network purchases .

As illustrated in Figure 1, in the overall arrangement a

customer or consumer operating an Internet or other client 102

communicates via communications link 114 to a one or more of a

group of vendors 104a, 10^'4b, ...104n (n arbitrary) . The client

102 may be or include, for instance, a personal computer

running the Microsoft Windows™ 95, 98, Millenium™, NT™, or

2000, Windows™CE™, PalmOS™, Unix, Linux, Solaris ™, OS/2 ™,

BeOS ™, MacOS ™ or other operating system or platform. The

client 102 may also be or include a network-enabled appliance

such as a WebTV™ unit, radio-enabled Palm™ Pilot or similar

unit, a set-top box, a networkable game-playing console such

as Sony. Playstation™ or Sega Dreamcast™, a browser-equipped

cellular telephone,^' or other TCP/IP client or other device.

The communications link 114 to which the client 102

connects may be, include or interface to any one or more of,

for instance, ^'the Internet, an intranet^", a PAN (Personal Area

Network) , a LAN (Local Area Network) , a WAN (Wide Area Network) or a MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) , a frame relay

connection, an Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) connection,

a synchronous optical network (SONET) connection, a digital

Tl, T3 or El line, Digital Data Service (DDS) connection, DSL

(Digital Subscriber Line) connection, an Ethernet connection,

an ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) line, a dial-up

port such as a V.90, V.34 or V.34bis analog modem connection,

a cable modem, an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) connection,

or FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) or CDDI (Copper

Distributed Data Interface) connections. The communications

link 114 may furthermore "be, include or interface to any one

or more of a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) link, a GPRS

(General Packet Radio Service) link, a GSM (Global System for

Mobile Communication) link, a CDMA (Code Division Multiple

Access) or TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) link such as a

cellular phone channel, a GPS (Global Positioning . System)

link, CDPD (cellular digital packet data) , a RIM (Research in

Motion, Limited) duplex paging type device, a Bluetooth radio

link, .or. an IEEE 802.11-based radio frequency link.

Communications link 114 may yet further be, include or

interface to any one or more of an RS-232 serial connection,

an IEEE-1394 (Firewire) connection, an IrDA (infrared) port, a

SCSI (Small Computer Serial .Interface) connection, a USB

(Universal Serial Bus) connection or other wired or wireless, digital or analog interface or connection. Other illustrated

communications links may include the same types of resources.

In one embodiment, the telephony engine 108 supporting

transaction processing according to the invention may

preferably be or include a DMS™ 100, DMS™ 200, DMS™ 300, DMS™

500 or other series telephony switching and management

platform manufactured by Nortel Networks Limited, Ontario,

Canada and such as are frequently installed and used for

public telephony support. . Information concerning the hardware

and software of these machines may be found in, for example,

the Nortel Networks Website located at

http://www.nortelnetworks.com/products, and subpages entitled

DMS Supernode Data Manager (SDM) ; DMS-1 Urban; DMS-10; DMS-10

STP; DMS-100; DMS-100 Wireless; DMS-250; DMS-300; DMS-300/250;

DMS-500; DMS-GSP; DMS-MTX; DMS-PSN/Programmable Switch; DMS-

SSP: DMS-STP; DMS-STP/SSP Integrated Node, and all associated

pages and links including Tech Specs thereunder, incorporated

by reference.

However, according to the invention the existing hardware

infrastructure such as the Nortel Networks Limited switching

equipment mentioned may be directed towards the separate

support of generalized ecommerce transactions, rather than for

traditional telephony purposes. The resulting transaction mechanism is secure, authenticated and may be fully or partly

anonymous as desired.

In the practice of the invention, the customer or

consumer operating the client 102 may access a Web page or

other network commerce portal of one or more of vendors 104a,

104b ... 104n, such as by accessing a secure Web server URL

(Universal Resource Locator) on a browser application on

client 102.

A software module running on the Web server or other

resource of vendors 104a, l^'04b, ... 104n may intercept the

inquiry,- to determine if' the consumer has possession of a

personal ticket, digital certificate, digital signature, or

cookie other verifying data object. If the consumer operating

client 102 is in possession of a personal ticket 138 when

initiating a transaction at the Web site, the Web site or

other network resource of vendors 104a, 104b, ... 104n may

accept a copy of the personal ticket 138 over communication

link 114.

Al-ternatively individual key attributes supplied by the

consumer may communicated by the Web site of vendors 104a,

104b, ... 104n to a transaction server 106 for validation. The

transaction server 106 may be or include, for instance, a

workstation running the Microsoft Windows™ NT™, Windows™ 2000,

Unix, Linux, Xenix, IBM AIX, Hewlett-Packard UX, Novell Netware™, Sun Microsystems Solaris™, OS/2™, BeOS™, Mach,

Apache, OpenStep™ or other operating system or platform. The

personal ticket 138 may be received by the transaction server^'

106 directly from the consumer operating client 102, or

relayed via the vendor 104a, 104b, ... 104n. Once received by

the transaction server 106,^' the personal ticket 138 may be

communicated through telephony engine 108 for validation or

authentication against authentication database 110 and other

transaction processing.

Authentication database 110 may be, include or interface

to, for instance, a line Information database (LIDB) resource

operating according to the SS7 network protocol on the public

telecommunications network, as understood by persons skilled,

in the art. The authentication database 110 may likewise be,

include or interface to resources such as the ATT Corp.

Billing Validation Application (BVA) or the U.S. West Business

Validation Service (BVS) , or others.

The authentication database 110 may further be, include

or interface to, for example, the Oracle™ relational database

sold commercially by Oracle Corp. Other databases, such as

Informix™, DB2 (Database 2) or other data storage or query

formats or platforms such as OLAP (On Line Analytical

Processing) , SQL (Standard Query Language) , Microsoft Access™ or others may also be used, incorporated or accessed in the

invention.

The authentication database 110 may record consumer

account, personal ticket, digital certificate, digital

signature, digital envelope and other information, such as

calling card account, retail merchant account, credit card

account, debit card account or other financial or other

information. Upon authentication of the consumer's

transaction request against the authentication database 110,

an acceptance -signal may be passed via communications link 120

to telephony engine 108 and transaction server 106.

The validation against the authentication database 110

may be based on partial or anonymous information provided by

customer by the consumer operating the client 102. That is, a

consumer may simply provide an isolated identification number

or string which does not act as a key field into other

information relating to the consumer, at least for the vendor

or others .

Once., authentication is established against the separate

resource of authentication database 110, the transaction

server 106 may hash or encrypt a digital signature or one or

more key attributes or data fields associated with the personal ticket 138 for transmission to the Web site or other

resource of vendors, 104a, 104b, ... 104n. The vendor may receive this information, including the

personal ticket 138 in whole or part, and which may be in

encrypted form, for transaction execution, such as by the

commercially known NAAD [spell out acronym] protocol. If all

necessary information is present and valid, the vendors, 104a,

104b, ... 104n may embed further identification, transaction or

other information for the transaction into a further object

such as a digital signature, digital certificate, or digital

envelope for recording by the transaction server 106. The

digital envelope or other recordation of the transaction may

then be communicated to the telephony engine 108, which may in

turn pass a transaction summary to the. billing services 112 of

the telephony infrastructure.

Alternatively, payment may be made directly against

accounts registered within authentication database 110, for

reconciliation according to credit card, calling card, or

other arrangements.- If billed through billing services 112,

an account summary indicating a transaction activity may be

included -within a regular monthly or other telecommunications

statement issued by a telecommunications provider to their

customer, by mail or otherwise.

Because the authentication of the transaction may proceed

on selected attribute information provided by the consumer at

client 102, the information pertaining to the transaction may be kept private, except to the service provider operating the

transaction server 106 and related apparatus acting as a

trusted third party and intermediary for the consumer and the

vendor .

Because the personal ticket 138 may^' be recorded and

transmitted in whole or part by the transaction server 106 on

a secure basis, a consumer may choose to permit account and

other information to persist for a given duration of time,

such as one month or one year, and therefore - permit the

consumer to initiate new transactions without the need for

reentering and revalidating all account information.

Encryption of the personal ticket 138 or other data objects or

information exchanged during transactions according to the

invention may be encrypted using the X.500, X.509, SSL (Secure

Socket Layer) , SET (Secure Electronic Transaction) or other

encryption or security techniques, to add safety or anonymity

to the implementation of the invention.

A transaction event according to the invention is

illustrated in Figure 2. As shown in that figure, a consumer

operating with client 102 may communicate attribute data 140

to the transaction server 106 to establish a potential or

pending transaction with one or more vendors 104a, 104b,

104n, after having established a secure account with the

transaction server 106 including authentication information recorded on authentication database 110. The transaction

server 106 may then transmit a confirmation 148 to the vendors

104a, 104b, ...104n confirming a desired status to the vendor,

such as being an existing account holder.

The given transaction vendor 104a, 104b, ... 104n, may then

present a query 150 to the consumer, to which the consumer may

reply with a response 152. The consumer at client 102 may

then engage in a secure dialog 154 with the transaction server

106, for instance via the telephony engine 108 or otherwise to

validate information against the authentication database 110.

After this communication, 'the transaction server 106 may issue

or validate a personal ticket 138 as belonging to the consumer

to vendors 104a, 104b, ...104n, thus establishing the validity

or identity of the consumer for purposes of the transaction

being performed.

After confirmation of purchase amounts, tax, shipping or

other transaction details, the transaction server 106 may

exchange transaction results 156 on a secure basis with the

vendor ...10.4a, 104b, ... 104n including to provide billing or

receipt information to the vendors, and/or to the consumer.

Access-controlled processing according to the invention

will be described with reference to Figure 3. In step 302,

processing begins. In step 304, the consumer may transmit

attribute data to the vendor 104a, 104b, ... 104n, for example "Registered owner of software X" without communicating full

identification or account information. In step 306, the

vendors 104a, 104b, ... 104n may interrogate the consumer at

client 102 for further information surrounding or connected to

the pending transaction In step 308, the consumer may engage

in a secure dialog with the transaction server 106 using, for

instance, the registration number for the register user of

software X as recorded in authentication database 110.

The service provider or operator of the transaction

server 106 may thus be securely aware of the identity of the

consumer, however the vendors 104a, 104b, ... 104n may not be

similarly aware. In step 310, the transaction server 106 may

prepare, ^• decode, transmit or access a personal ticket 138

storing or presenting account and other information of the

consumer to the participating one or more of vendors 104a,

104b, ...104n or to client 102, for instance validating a credit

card account for purchase of a upgrade of software X.

In step 312, the transaction server 106 may communicate

with the -..vendor or vendors 104a, 104b, ... 104n to apply the

upgrade price or other transaction amount against the credit

card or other accounts, and in step 314 the transaction server

may reconcile the transaction. In step 316, an encrypted

receipt or other confirmation may be generated. In step 318,

processing ends . An overall architecture according to the invention

in another regard is illustrated in Figure 4, in which the

interconnection of the transaction server 106, a telephony

engine 108 such as the Nortel Networks DMS™ platform for

metering, billing or other associated services, the vendor

transaction site' or sites such as Web pages or other portals,

the client and other aspects are shown.

In general, according to the overall architecture in

which the invention in one embodiment may operate, consumers

may initiate and execute transactions over a dial-up,

broadband or other Internet or other network connections,

which transactions may be monitored and mediated via

transaction server 106, telephony engine 108 along with

attendant database, communications and other resources. The

messaging traffic between the consumer and the vendor, and

between the vendor and the authentication resources, again may

be of a partial, anonymous and/or secure nature.

This is at least in part because the invention does not

demand _... the transmission of complete identity or account

information, whether in^' the clear, encrypted or otherwise, at

any one stage of the transaction process. Rather, a subset of

selected attributes, fields or keywords may be queried between

the consumer and the commercial vendor for the separate

transmission ^'to the party, company or other organization operating the transaction server 106, telephony engine 108 or

authentication database 110, and only the party providing the

authentication function necessarily records more complete

information in order to carry out that task. As shown in that

figure and described above, billing against the consumer's

account, telephone bill or otherwise may be triggered by a

validated authentication sequence whose details may never be

communicated to the vendor. The vendor may consequently

receive payment directly or indirectly from banks or other

financial intermediaries separately after that process, with

whom the consumer separately reconciles. Transaction privacy

and flexibility for consumers are therefore enhanced.

The foregoing description of the system and method of the

invention is illustrative, and variations in configuration and

implementation will occur to persons skilled in the art. For

instance, while the invention has been described in terms of

the reuse of -telephony equipment provided by Nortel Networks Limited, telephone switching and other equipment provided by

other manufacturers may be similarly redirected.

Furthermore, certain resources such as computing, data,

communications or other resources illustrated as singular or

standalone may be distributed, and one or more separate

resources may be combined. Likewise, companies, organizations

or other parties operating or supervising different segments of the processing chain could be one in the same, so for

example authentication entities could also own or operate the

transaction engine or engines, or other resources.

Moreover, while the invention has been generally been

described with respect to purchase transactions involving the

debiting of the consumer's account, in another embodiment

steps of the transaction processing may be executed in reverse

manner to recharge, refund or otherwise credit the consumer's

account. The scope of the invention is accordingly intended

only by the following claims.

Claims

What is claimed is:

1. A system for the management of electronic

transactions, comprising:

a first interface to an authentication database via a

public telecommunications resource; and

a second interface, communicating with the first

interface, the second interface operative to communicate with

at least one network-enabled transaction site to execute a

transaction via the transaction site when validated against

the authentication database.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the public

telecommunications resource comprises a connection via a

switching apparatus embedded in the public telecommunications

network.

3. The system of claim 2, further comprising an access

policy manager running on the switching apparatus.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the authentication

database comprises at least one of an LIDB source, an OLAP

source,... and another relational database source communicating

with the switching apparatus .

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the network-enabled .

transaction site comprises an Internet connection.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the validation

against the authentication database is performed using

attribute data.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the attribute data is

a subset of information contained in the authentication

database.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the attribute data

enables anonymous execution of the transaction.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising a

transaction server, communicating with the first interface and

the second interface, the transaction server communicating

with the public telecommunications resource to manage the

execution of the transaction.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the transaction

server issues at least one of a personal ticket, a digital

certificate, a digital signature, and a digital envelope in

connection with the transaction.

11. A method for the management of electronic

transac.ti--.ns, comprising:

a) communicating with at least one network-enabled

transaction site to execute a transaction via the

transaction site; and

b) validating the transaction against an authentication

database via a public telecommunications resource.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the

telecommunications resource comprises a switching apparatus

embedded in the public telecommunications network.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising a step^' of

(c) running an access policy manager running on the switching

apparatus.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the step (b) of

validating comprises a step of validating the transaction

against at least one of a LIDB source, an OLAP source, and

another relational database source.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein the network-enabled

transaction site comprises an Internet connection.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the step (b) of

validating is performed using attribute data.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the attribute data

is a subset of information contained in the authentication

database .

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the attribute data

permits., anonymous execution of the transaction.

19. The metho^'d of claim 11, further comprising a step of

(d) managing the execution of the transaction on a transaction

server.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising a step of

(e) issuing at least one of a personal ticket, a digital certificate, a digital signature, and a digital envelope in

connection with the transaction via the transaction server.